One of my
favourite music blogs I follow for Catalan, Spanish and International stuff, is
La Voz Telúrica. The authors have spent a year getting in touch with new
relatively-unknown groups to see if they would record versions of classic
Spanish pop songs, to be released this summer via a free legal download on the
webpage. The result is this- free here to get!!

According
to the webpage this is “musica ligera”, light music, and on further reading I
take this to mean classic pop hits from the 60s and 70s which were loved at
their time but have since fallen out of favour as they are not Cool - until now!
I’d compare it to the Guilty Pleasures concept in English music – should we
feel guilty about listening to Showaddywaddy instead of Bob Dylan? Until now,
those “in the know” would have laughed at any cool youngster with Abba on his
MP3 player – but nowadays it seems that the circle has closed and at last it’s
accepted that we can all just enjoy whatever we want and forget what’s
fashionable and what ain’t. Motorhead in the morning , and The Carpenters in
the afternoon. So what?!

Anyway, I’ve
never been a really big fan of Spanish music so I come at this LP from a
different angle, with no “guilt” or “baggage” at all to weigh on my opinions. Don’t
know the songs, the original artists, or the new ones! So I’m simply listening
to it as a collection of songs which may just as well have fallen off the back
of a bus. And my conclusion? It’s good stuff – well worth a free download!
Hardly a Rolling Stone review, I know, but I’d rather you made your own mind
up! I will mention my fave tracks though if you insist: Resistiré, Puerta de
Amor, Señor, Dile.

So, if you
want some perfect summer easy listening to make those heatwaves more bearable,
or you want to practice your Spanish, this is the LP for you!